


i can't see where you're coming from

by yeswayappianway



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Blood and Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-07 06:49:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16403381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/pseuds/yeswayappianway
Summary: “G, if we die here, I’m going to murder you.” Sid’s not looking at Geno when he says it, because he’d thought he’d seen a flash of movement inside the cave in front of them, but nothing’s come out. Yet.“If we die, I’m come back as ghost anyway,” Geno says, sounding bizarrely cheerful.Sid shudders and steadies his hand on his revolver, checking his ammo belt with his other hand. He hopes like hell that Flower and Tanger got their last garbled transmission before their comms cut out, because he and Geno can’t last out here forever. There’s a reason no one lives on this half of the planet.





	i can't see where you're coming from

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snoozingkitten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snoozingkitten/gifts).



> dear snoozingkitten,  
> i tried to stay away from your dislikes, but i can't say i did a great job of sticking to your likes. hopefully you like it anyway!
> 
> this is heavily inspired by Borderlands (the video game series). you absolutely don't need to know anything about that to read it, but if you're reading it and you're thinking "wow, this reminds me a lot of borderlands," you are 100% correct! relatedly, the title is from Short Change Hero, by The Heavy
> 
> thank you SO MUCH to Brenna for beta-ing this for me and absolutely making it better, and also thanks to Tsu for letting me yell at you about my various ideas. you both rock <3

“G, if we die here, I’m going to murder you.” Sid’s not looking at Geno when he says it, because he can’t take his eyes off the cave in front of him. He’d thought he’d seen a flash of movement inside it, but nothing’s come out. Yet.

“If we die, I’m come back as ghost anyway,” Geno says, sounding bizarrely cheerful. Sid can feel how tense his shoulders are, though, with the way they’re standing—back to back, for maximum coverage of the area.

Sid shudders anyway. “Don’t say that. It’s bad enough that we’re stuck in this canyon with god only knows what, I don’t need to start thinking about ghosts.” He steadies his hand on his revolver, checking his ammo belt with his other hand. He hopes like hell that Flower and Tanger got their last garbled transmission before their comms cut out, because as good as he and Geno are, they can’t last out here forever. There’s a reason no one lives on this half of the planet.

“Okay,” says Geno, and Sid can feel him shrug. “What if we live?”

“What?” Sid asks, distracted. He chances a look up at the violently green sky. So far they’ve avoided any attention from above, and Sid knows that’s largely due to luck.

“If we die, you murder me. If we live—what do you do?”

Snorting, Sid answers, “Say I told you so. I knew this job was going to be a disaster.”

“Come on, Sid,” Geno whines. Sid hates that he loves how Geno says his name, even when he’s complaining. Geno keeps going. “We just have to make it back to scary scientist lady, and she’ll pay us. Good money, Sid.”

Sid is forced to concede the point. The professor had offered them a ridiculous amount of money for a few old digi-logs, and Sid’s a little worried about what she plans to do with them now that they found them, but that’s not his problem. His problem, at the moment, is staying alive until Flower and Tanger can come get them in the skimmer so they can fulfil the contract. Long-term… well. Long-term isn’t something Sid likes to think about a lot. There isn’t any chance of him going back to somewhere more civilized, seeing as he’s legally dead, so for now, he’s just living one job at a time. At least the money will ensure he can keep being picky about what jobs they take. Sid opens his mouth to argue anyway, mostly just to stave off boredom, but Geno hisses, “Shut up!”

At first, he can’t hear anything other than the howl of the wind through the top of the canyon. Then he hears it too. There’s a scraping noise coming from one of the other caves lining the cliff wall. “Fuck,” Sid whispers. It sounds like claws against rock, and it definitely sounds like more than one of whatever it is.

“Tell you what I’m do,” Geno says, voice lowered as if he doesn’t want anything to overhear. “If we get out, I’m ask you out on date finally.”

 _What the fuck_ , Sid thinks in shock, but there’s no time. Two snarling forms rush at them out of the cave, and Sid gets two quick shots off into one while Geno almost gracefully rolls a grenade at the other one. It goes off, and the two beasts are destroyed. It was loud, though, and Sid knows that they won’t have long before more of the local animals show up. Treasure hunting would be so much easier if there weren’t so many things that ate humans.

They’ve spun to face the same cave, standing shoulder to shoulder now, and in the temporary quiet, Sid looks over at Geno. “A date?”

Geno looks stubborn, like he thinks Sid’s going to argue with him. “Yes. I’m want to ask you for— long time now, but never a good time.” He shrugs. “If we don’t die, I don’t care about good time.”

“But—” Sid’s completely blindsided, so he says the first thing that comes to mind. “You barely know me.”

He expects Geno to argue, but he doesn’t. All Geno says is, “That’s why I want date. Get to know real you, not just how good you are at shooting and finding jobs for us.”

Sid goes cold. He has more reason than most not to let people get to know the real him, and telling Geno about himself wouldn’t be a fun time for anyone. Unfortunately, he also can’t deny that he’s plenty interested in getting to know Geno better as well. “Well, we get out of here alive, we’ll see what happens,” he says, noncommittally.

Geno wrinkles up his nose, like that answer offended him personally. He doesn’t get a chance to say more, though, because there’s more noise, and this time it’s coming from multiple caves. They exchange a look, and despite the imminent threat, Sid can feel a grin starting to spread across his face. No one becomes a treasure hunter without being kind of fucked up, and as much as Sid worries, there’s something about moments like this that make him feel so alive. Geno’s answering smile is feral, teeth bared before he powers up his blade, and they stand back to back again.

There’s at least twenty of the animals, rushing out from the caves, and Sid starts firing. He hits one of the howling things in the eye and another shot goes right into its mouth. There’s a reason he and Geno are two of the most successful treasure hunters this side of the planet, and it’s not just because they take on jobs that everyone else (and, usually, Sid) thinks are impossible. It’s also because they’re _good_ at what they do, and a lot of what they do ends up being killing things.

He hears the hum of Geno cutting into one of the creatures. Sid still doesn’t know what the weapon is actually called, but it looks like someone welded an energy knife onto a walking stick, and Geno uses it with a remarkable amount of precision. They’re making a decent dent in the pack of animals charging them, but the pack is also surrounding them. Sid keeps firing with his revolver, picking shots and occasionally kicking one of the things back with the heavy sole of his boot.

“Sid!” he hears Geno shout, and Sid sees one of them leaping at him. “Duck!” Geno yells, and Sid instinctively follows his instruction, looking up to see Geno swing his blade around just in time for the animal to impale itself.

“Oh shit,” Sid breathes, and when Geno looks down at him, Sid just points up.

They’re no longer avoiding attention from above. Two of the giant bat-like creatures that fly over this half of the planet are diving down.

“Maybe they eat the wolf things?” Geno suggests, swinging his blade through two of the—wolf things works as well as anything else, Sid figures. His first reaction is to roll his eyes, but Sid realizes Geno can’t see that, as busy as they are fighting off the wolf things.

“Sure, G, and maybe they’ll just drop some nice replacement ammo for me while they’re at it.” Sid’s trying not to think about how much he has left, because he doesn’t like the answer. “Fuck,” he swears as one of the wolf things opens its mouth and a long tongue shoots out and slices open his arm. Sid drops his revolver into his non-injured hand and fires up through the thing’s throat. It collapses with a sickening gurgle at his feet, and almost immediately, another one takes its place. “Geno,” he calls. “Maybe now would be a good time to call in reinforcements?”

Geno doesn’t answer, but a few seconds later, Sid hears an ear-splitting whistle. He focuses on continuing to shoot the attacking animals, hoping he won’t suddenly be picked off the ground by bat-like talons, and he tries even harder to pick his shots, conserving his bullets.

“Good girl!” Geno yells, and Sid smiles a little. He looks up, and sure enough, there’s Dixie, tearing into the bat-like creatures and taking their attention off the fight on the ground. Sid had a hard enough time believing that Geno could actually control the giant furred bird the first time he saw it, much less that Geno had named it Dixie and insisted she was cuddly, but he’s incredibly grateful for Dixie right now.

It feels like maybe the tide of the fight is turning with Dixie’s arrival, and Sid knows they’ve killed maybe half of the pack of wolf creatures that had charged at them. He lets himself think about what Geno said earlier, in between firing and reloading. A date. Sid’s always been a private person, both by nature and because of his history, but if there was anyone he would consider letting in, it would probably be Geno. They’d taken enough jobs together that he was maybe the person Sid trusted most on the planet, apart from Flower. Of course, those same jobs are the reason Sid knows he’d never let a date happen. There are plenty of bounties—legal or otherwise—for people of special interest to the system-wise Institute, and just because Sid never takes them didn’t mean Geno does the same. Sid can’t risk the next bounty being on his own head.

Looking back at Geno fighting off two wolf things with a look of intense concentration, the muscles in his arms standing out as he swings the blade, Sid sighs a little wistfully. It’s a shame, but he’ll have to figure out some way to turn Geno down when this is all over.

Just then, something moves in the dark of a cave off to Sid’s left. “Geno!” he shouts, a little panicked. “On my nine!” Sid’s heart leaps into his throat as the thing moves out of the cave. It’s huge, probably ten feet tall, and some kind of monstrous insect with glowing spit dripping out of its clacking mouth. The wolf creatures scatter away in front of it, but not before it picks one up in one of its front legs, and bites its head off.

Geno curses long and loudly in a language Sid doesn’t understand. He’d never asked Geno where he was from, Sid realizes suddenly, and now he probably never would. Geno lobs two grenades at it in quick succession, and it seems to slow the thing down temporarily, but not enough.

The wolf things are regrouping on the other side of the canyon and when Sid looks up, Dixie is still fighting the two bat-like creatures, but it was hard to make out their forms against the quickly darkening sky. He can almost make out the first pair of moons that rise at twilight, and it occurs to Sid that he actually might die here. It doesn’t matter how good a shot he is if he runs out of bullets. He’s pretty sure that Geno’s weapon runs on power packs, and Sid doubts that he has many extras. Once it got fully dark, it would be almost impossible for Flower and Tanger to find them now that their comms had gone out, and who knows what other goddamn monsters would come out of these caves at night.

“Sid, what’s plan?” Geno yells. He doesn’t seem to be panicking yet, and as Sid looks over at him, he feels a surge of fondness. As ridiculous as Geno could be, he stays calm under pressure almost to a fault. There is blood covering Geno’s arms, and Sid can’t even find it in himself to be grossed out by how hot he finds it, the evidence of Geno’s deadly competence and determination.

It turns out to be distracting enough that Sid doesn’t notice the stream of acid the insect monster spits at him. He hears Geno scream, and Sid glances up to see something green flying at his face, and as he prepares, almost instinctively, to use the powers he’s suppressed for the last five years, something hits him from the side and knocks him out of the way. Sid hits the ground hard, and shortly after, feels something collapse onto his leg. The acid had mostly missed him, but a tiny amount has gotten in his eyes, just enough that everything looks blurry and faintly green. “Geno?” he croaks, and sits bolt upright when there’s no response.

His vision still not entirely clear, it takes him a second to realize that what had hit his leg is Geno. Sid almost falls over in his rush to bend down and check for a pulse. He finds one, but weak, so weak Sid almost can’t feel it. He looks up from Geno’s prone body, at the wolf creatures and the insect monster towering over them.

Sid closes his eyes. He hasn’t done this in so long, but if there was ever a time, it’s now. He takes a deep breath, strips off the gloves he always wears, and holstering his revolver, spreads his arms. Concentrating, he thinks of how it used to feel in the Institute, the sense of energy rushing down his fingers and spreading around him, forming into a shield to protect him, to protect Geno. When he opens his eyes again, his vision is clear and he can see the shimmering gold bubble surrounding them. Sid takes another deep breath. He’s out of practice, so he doesn’t know how long he can keep this up. He’s all but given up hope that Flower and Tanger would be able to find them, but he’s not about to let Geno fucking die on him. Not like this.

The shield wavers as Sid lowers one hand, but it stays up, and he grabs his revolver again. Trying very hard not to think about what he was about to do, Sid waits for one of the wolf creatures to leap at the bubble and lets it slip for just an instant, slamming it back up once the animal is inside. Sid shoots it instantly.

It goes on that way for a few minutes, Sid’s fingers trembling with the effort of keeping the shield under such precise control and he knows it won’t last much longer. He doesn’t know how Dixie is doing, hasn’t even bothered to look up. The insect monster is still stalking around near the wall of the canyon, but most of the wolf things are gone. Geno still hasn’t moved, and Sid can hear his labored breathing periodically. He thinks back bitterly to their last medpack that they’d used after the roof of the dilapidated building they’d found the digi-logs in had collapsed on them. There’s nothing else Sid can do.

Sid kneels down next to Geno and gently cups his face, lowering his other hand slowly but taking care to keep the shield up. “Hey,” he says. “Hey, G, wake up.”

Geno opens his eyes ever so slightly. “What happen? We win?”

“Not quite,” Sid says, not sure whether to laugh or cry. “You idiot, why did you jump into that for me?”

Brow furrowed, Geno answers as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. “Couldn’t let you die, Sid.”

Now Sid does laugh, desperately. “How do you think I feel now? I’m doing the best I can, G, but I don’t know if we’ll make it out of this.” He can’t bring himself to say it definitively, even though he’s certain they are going to die here.

“The best you—” Geno looks up, opening his eyes more and gasps. “What is this?” he asks, awe evident in his voice.

Sid sighs. “I’m a conduit, Geno. That’s what they called it at the Institute, anyway. I’m keeping a shield up around us, which I _would_ have been able to do with the acid, but you decided to be a hero.”

Geno looks back at him and he seems confused, although Sid can;t tell if it was because of what he said or because of his injuries. “The Institute? What they have to do with you?”

“They experimented on me when I was younger,” Sid says bluntly. “Some kind of program to try and ‘awaken the superhuman within the human.’ Just another way to make money,” he adds bitterly. Sid’s sure that plenty of the other people he’d seen there are now furiously campaigning against the Institute, if they aren’t dead. Sid couldn’t do it, so he ran all the way across the solar system, and here he is. “Haven’t you seen the bounty postings for ‘enhanced humans’? The Institute posts them every time they come through a planet.”

“Fuck that,” Geno says, grimacing. “Don’t hunt _people_ , hunt treasure.”

Sid shrugs. “I’m sure they’d tell you we are treasure. Precious, Institute-owned treasure. Anyway, that’s why I hide it. I don’t want anyone trying to bring me in.” Sid looks out at the shield he’s still maintaining. “I don’t want anything they did to me to be useful, but… sometimes it is.”

Weakly, Geno grabs at Sid’s hand and pulls it in front of his face to look at the glowing veins that run down to Sid’s fingertips, pulsing the same pale gold as the shield around them. “Wow,” he says, and Sid laughs again, his head thrown back.

Geno looks confused. “What’s funny?”

“I thought you—I don’t know what I thought, but I was so afraid to tell you, and all you have to say is wow,” Sid giggles. He sobers up quickly, though. “G, I’m sorry—we don’t have any medpacks. I got some of the wolf things, but the big insect is still out there, and I don’t know what happened to Dixie. I don’t know what we can do.”

“Still have my pack?” Geno asks, voice hoarse, whether from yelling or acid damage, Sid doesn’t know.

He looks around, and spots Geno’s pack laying on the ground a few feet away. Sid stands up quickly and grabs it. One of the wolf creatures throws itself at the shield, which flickers for a second. Sid can feel the headache building the longer he keeps this up, but there’s nothing else he can do.

Geno points at the pack. “Outside pocket, one big exploding grenade. If we get them all in one place, can blow them up at once.”

Sid nods grimly. “Okay. I think we can do that. Let’s get you as far over here as we can,” and he helps Geno stand. It’s rough, and Sid forces himself not to think about it. They get Geno over to the very edge of the bubble, away from the insect monster. Sid takes the explosive and plants it at the opposite edge of his shield. Steeling himself, he stands over it, and drops the shield.

There’s a moment of stillness, and then everything happens at once. The wolf things rush towards him, as does the giant monster. Sid runs backwards as quickly as he can, and when he’s reached Geno, he pulls out his revolver and fires off one quick shot at where he’d placed the grenade. With the last bit of his energy, he throws up another shield between the two of them and the explosion.

When the dust clears and the noise stops reverberating off the canyon walls, Sid collapses in relief. They’d done it. Of course, there’s still no sign of Dixie, and no guarantee that Flower and Tanger can find them, but the wolf things and the giant insect creature were all dead, and he and Geno are still alive. Sid lets himself fall back onto the ground beside Geno and stares up at the twin pairs of moons crossing the mostly dark sky.

“Sid,” Geno says, deliberately. “When we survive, I’m ask you on date, definitely.”

Sid laughs long and hard. “G, when we get back to the ship and you feel better, I’m giving you the best blowjob ever, dates can wait.”

Geno makes a choked-off noise. “Also good.”

There’s a pause. Sid doesn’t know what Geno is thinking about, and as he stares up at the dark green moonlit sky, he feels his eyes slipping closed. He thinks maybe Geno says his name, but after the excitement of the fight has worn off, Sid feels all the energy he’d spent catching up with him.

He wakes up to the sound of a skimmer landing and Geno gently nudging him. “Sid, look,” he says. “They found us.”

Both of them are in bad shape, Geno still reeling from the acid blast and Sid bone-dead exhausted, but they manage to pull each other up off the ground and hobble over to the ramp that has just extended from the side of the skimmer.

Tanger is waiting in the doorway, and when he sees them, he looks horrified and immediately rushes forward to help them onto the vehicle. “Fuck, what happened to you two?” he asks.

Sid and Geno share a look. Geno is the one who answers. “We got logs. Sid say ‘I told you so’.” He doesn’t mention anything about Sid’s newly revealed abilities, and Sid is grateful. Telling Geno about them had been a relief in some ways, and the prospect of not having to hide his whole past around everyone is appealing, but regardless, Sid still wants it to be on his own terms.

Rolling his eyes, Tanger leads them into the skimmer, hitting the button behind him to close up the ramp. “I’m glad you made it. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” Sid stumbles forward after him, but Geno stops just inside.

“Dixie!” he cries joyfully. Dixie hops awkwardly towards Geno, looking pretty rough herself.

As he walks across the cargo hold to the front of the skimmer, Tanger says, “You should give her a treat, G, she’s the one that led us to you.”

Geno murmurs something to Dixie that Sid can’t make out. Sid watches them for a minute, and feels fondness creep over him again. He wants to collapse into a bed and not move for a week, but there’s something he needs to do first.

“Hey, Geno,” Sid says. Geno looks away from Dixie, his eyebrows wrinkled.

“You okay?” he asks, sounding worried.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” answers Sid, and he manages to make his tired legs carry him over to Geno. Luckily, the skimmer isn’t that big so he didn’t have to go far. “We didn’t die.”

Geno makes a face. “Almost died.”

“But we didn’t,” Sid insists. “So I think you had a question for me.”

Sid waits for Geno to catch up. It doesn’t take long. Sid watches as Geno’s eyes widen and he swallows loudly. “You answer?”

Smiling, Sid reaches up for Geno’s face, and pulls him down into a kiss. When Geno draws back, startled, Sid says, “Yes, I’ll go on a date with you.” Geno smiles finally, looking incredibly pleased with himself. “But also,” Sid adds, grinning, “I did tell you so.”

**Author's Note:**

> (flower and tanger wolf whistle at them from the doorway. geno's like 'go away' and then sid asks 'wait if you're back here, who's flying the skimmer' and flower pretends to have forgotten and lets everyone freak out for a minute and then says 'nah i put it on autopilot' and tanger is laughing too hard to yell at him)


End file.
